Cornish Lexicography from the 9th Century AD to the Present Day

A variety of reference sources provide information about the Cornish lexicon over a period of approximately a thousand years. Glosses in the margins of Latin manuscripts give Cornish equivalents for items in the text. Glossaries provide lists of items with their equivalents. The notes and essays of philologists explore an assortment of data concerning lexical items. Published and unpublished dictionaries give more comprehensive accounts of the Cornish lexicon. Cornish lexicography has passed through three phases. During the first phase, which includes the early glosses and the Vocabularium Cornicum, the target language is Latin and the dictionary user's first language Cornish. The second phase begins in the mid 17th century vocabulary and is purely descriptive. In other words the lexicographer is simply recording data about the Cornish lexicon. Meaning is dealt with by providing English translation equivalents. This overlaps with the third phase, in which reconstruction is attempted by the lexicographer. Lhuyd (1707) is the first to fill in gaps in the lexicon by borrowing from Welsh. He is followed by Borlase (1754) and Nance (1938, 1952, 1955). In the 20th century, several attempts have been made to standardise spellings to meet the demands of Cornish language revivalists.